"American Idol" contestant will be confronted with his criminal record and kicked off the show.

The drama is on video, which will air on tonight's episode. That should be a ratings boost. Obviously, the news has leaked out so that people will watch:

Jermaine Jones [will be removed from] the show Wednesday [because of] his criminal record, which he hid from Idol's producers. TMZ reports that Jones was charged with two crimes in 2011, one involving violence, and in both instances he gave a fake name to cops when arrested. Even more surprising (particularly for the person responsible for vetting the contestants), Jones also has outstanding warrants.

Interestingly, the linked TMZ report doesn't name Jones. Perhaps it did before. It's a better ratings-goosing teaser if we don't know who the person is. Why didn't they catch the outstanding warrants? How do we know they didn't? This could all have been a set-up. Jones was originally eliminated from the competition at the point where the judges got the numbers down to 12 males and 12 females. Then, at the end of that show, they had a ratings-teasing announcement that they'd decided to bring back one of 4 of the males they had just eliminated, so that the show would go forward the next week with an uneven number of males and females. That was all very odd. I suspect they brought Jones back because they knew they'd be kicking him out later in a shockingly dramatic confrontation.

Through reality-show editing, Jones has been portrayed as a gentle giant (he's huge) and a big "mama's boy." "Mama" has been shown numerous times. Viewers have been encouraged to see him as a big lovable teddy bear. That has been similar to the presentation of Ruben Studdard, who was the ultimate winner in the second season of the series. Studdard is the only black man who has ever won the show, for what that's worth.